Filling A Need Or Filling The Time?

Local Tv Reporters Seem To Serve Little Purpose By Covering The Gulf War From The Front

January 24, 1991|By Rick Kogan, Television critic.

Joe Montana was forced mainly to dump off little Scuds to his receivers,`` said WFLD-Ch. 32 sportscaster Bruce Wolf.

He said this on TV earlier in the week, during his station`s 9 p.m. newscast. This was a few hours after WMAQ-Ch. 5 afternoon co-anchor Joan Esposito had turned to a colleague and asked, ``What`s a cluster bomb?`` The question was directed to that station`s weathercaster-commercial pilot Jim Tilmon, who provided a cogent, if obviously prepared, answer.

If the networks are having a difficult time covering a story as complicated as the war in the Persian Gulf, so are the news departments of our local stations.

Yet for many TV viewers-the CNN-less and those so overwhelmed by the network coverage that all they desire is a 30-minute news capsule-the local newscasts are the sole source of information about the crisis in the Mideast. In general, these viewers are getting a satisfactory product: a Cliffs Notes version of the conflict. The 10 p.m. news shows on Channels 2, 5 and 7- the major network`s affiliates-plus the 9 p.m. newscasts on WFLD (Fox) and WGN-Ch. 9 hit all the appropriate war-related stories, use all the most compelling footage and do their best to add local facets of the story to their broadcasts.

In assessing local news coverage, as most viewers know, there is little difference in quality as one moves up and down the TV dial.

The channels represent different covers of the same book, and one`s choice is dictated more by familiarity with the news-giving personalities than with substance.

Do you want WBBM-Ch. 2`s Bill Kurtis and Linda MacLennan on the cover?

That last pairing no longer exists. It`s Daly and Linda Yu, because Childers is one of our local ``boys`` at the front.

She is in Jerusalem, from which she is providing live reports mostly comprising such tired material that they define the term ``superfluous.``

She is not alone in the Mideast. WBBM has Jim Avila in Jerusalem and Jay Levine in Saudi Arabia. Chuck Goudie is in Dubai for WLS.

Starved for information

I have no problem with the deployment of local TV personalities to the Mideast, or to the scene of any other story. The affiliates can waste their monies in whatever manner they wish. And I suppose that having a local face at the front might be somehow reassuring to some viewers: surrogates on the spot. It`s the same philosophy that dictates having your station`s sports reporter on the sidelines at a Bears game: first-hand visibility implies a special intimacy with and access to players and coaches.

But this war is no game, and no one is able to get into the locker room. Even the most experienced combat correspondents are starving for information, frustrated by the Pentagon`s spoon feeding.

Avila and Levine have been filing solid if completely unnecessary reports, the latter getting local angles by rounding up Chicago-area soldiers or civilians to share their generally unrevealing feelings and opinions.

Childers, whose reportorial prowess has never manifested itself on any local story in my memory, is notable merely for her voice, heavy with import. Goudie is most out of it; Dubai is far from the killing fields. Indeed, it`s beyond the range of Iraqi missiles. Not surprisingly, Goudie`s reports have the immediacy of last week`s newspapers.

In one afternoon report ``live,`` over the telephone, he gave days-old news of Saudi troops abandoning their posts; characterized the ``feelings of the people`` by saying the conflict ``is hitting too close to home``; and, in a wild stab at self-aggrandizing sensationalism, worried aloud about Dubai`s

(and his) close proximity to Iran, a country theretofore as involved in the hostilities as was Tibet.

Window dressing?

Reporters are a strange breed, and I can`t blame any Chicago journalist for wanting to be near the action. I can`t assail their courage.

But given the vast resources of their parent networks, what end are the local TV reporters serving in the Mideast? Are they mere window dressing?

Those questions are part of another, more encompassing question: What is the mission of a local news department during a story of these proportions?

``I think it is twofold,`` said Robert Morse, vice president and general manager of WMAQ. ``On one level, we are doing what we do with any story, though this is one of immense magnitude. We provide a distillation of the day`s news. We give the viewers an understandable synopsis, something that makes sense and is easy to comprehend.

``On the other level, we are concerned with the ramifications of a story of this size on Chicago. In an area this large, those ramifications can be numerous and multifaceted, from business to personal lives.``

WMAQ is the only one of the three network affiliates that decided not to send one of its reporters or anchors to the war zone.